Rising divorce rates in urban India have become central to the emergent discourse on marriage, social change and neo-liberalism. In this seminar, Shalini Grover historically traces and compares Hindu divorce and the character of marital strife from the 1970's to the present century.

Richard Pearshouse, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch Health and Human Rights Division will present research detailing case studies of toxic water in Kilty Creek, Thailand and Hazaribagh, Bangladesh – some of the most polluted villages on the planet.

PhD candidate Salvarpatti Manuvelraj Ponnudurai will in this presentation explore the nitty gritty of alteration, misappropriation and distorted history, when he examines four local temples in Tamil Speaking South India where Buddha images are worshipped as local ‘Hindu’ deities. Open for all.

Srila Roy and Alf G. Nilsen’s new edited volume “New Subaltern Politics” presents a critical dialogue between the conceptual and analytical legacies of Subaltern Studies and the evolving forms of hegemony and resistance in contemporary India. From the struggles of the urban poor in Gujarat to the activism of sexual subalterns in eastern India and the mobilization of artisanal fishing communities in Tamil Nadu, the essays cover a diverse range of ongoing struggles against dispossession, disenfranchisement, and stigma that are unfolding in neoliberal India.

During the Suharto era, the official trade union was strictly prohibited from engaging with political parties and all but one of the ‘alternative’ unions publically rejected political unionism, preferring instead to seek recognition as a socio-economic force. Today, trade unions’ efforts to engage in electoral politics are tremendously significant for Indonesia’s emerging democracy.

Tid og sted:Travels to the center of the periphery: reading the texts of Osvaldo Cruz and Euclides da Cunha about the Amazon between 1905 and 1913
25. aug. 2015 14:15 - 16:00,
Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM), 4th floor, Sognsveien 68, Oslo

In this talk, Deep K. Datta-Ray engages India’s nuclear diplomacy in the terms of its makers and their analytical categories to offer rare insights into the little known world of the key decision makers themselves. Datta-Ray is the only person so far to have embedded in India’s Ministry of External Affairs, and he draws on this unique research to challenge prevailing assumptions about how India’s nuclear diplomacy works.

Harald Bøckman, who served as coordinator of the Network for Asia Studies from 1996 to his retirement in 2015, has been academically anchored in Sinology. Youthful irresponsibility misled him into Chinese studies in 1966, the year Chinese language was established as an academic discipline in Norway. At the time, studying Chinese was widely regarded as politically suspect by many, and as an entrance to various forms of utopia by others. In fact, it was hard work.